marvellously long, and still went on saying slowly, "Beware, beware."
He had clearly just come from the tower by which he stood, though I
had heard no footfall. Had a man come stealthily upon me at such an
hour and in so lonesome a place I had certainly felt surprised; but I
saw almost at once that he was a spirit, and he seemed with his
uncouth horn and his long white beard and that noiseless step of his
to be so native to that time and place that I spoke to him as one does
to some fellow-traveller who asks you if you mind having the window
up.

I asked him what there was to beware of.

"Of what should a town beware," he said, "but the Saracens?"

"Saracens?" I said.

"Yes, Saracens, Saracens," he answered and brandished his horn.

"And who are you?" I said.

"I, I am the spirit of the tower," he said.

When I asked him how he came by so human an aspect and was so unlike
the material tower beside him he told me that the lives of all the
watchers who had ever held the horn in the tower there had gone to
make the spirit of the tower. "It takes a hundred lives," he said.
"None hold the horn of late and men neglect the tower. When the walls
are in ill repair the Saracens come: it was ever so."

"The Saracens don't come nowadays," I said.